The news keeps on pouring in! Today's 2nd red post collection includes a look at the Ashe champion update that is set to hit the PBE soon, MattEnth on the optional Facebook friend finder being added in 5.8, a reminder on Ryze's champion update (plus a limited time bundle) that will be on live in 5.8. and a Dark Horses article on Support Nautilus!

Table of Contents:

Champion Update: Ashe Takes Aim at PBE

First up is a look at the upcoming Ashe champion update, which is due out to the PBE soon! This includes significant gameplay changes to her passive and Q as well as other tweaks to her kit!

"Another old timer within League’s ever-deepening champion pool, Ashe has seen almost six years shoot by with her launch kit largely intact. Until now! We’re not rebuilding her from the ground up, but we have made some pretty meaningful changes to her abilities all intended to solidify Ashe as League’s premier utility carry. Finally, we’re also sliding in a couple of small tweaks to give her opponents more ways to play against her. Here’s a rundown of her new moves!

Q: [NEW] Ranger’s Focus

Passive: Ashe gains a stack of Focus whenever she slows an enemy, up to a cap of five stacks.

Active: Ashe gains a small amount of attack speed and applies a heavier Frost Shot slow for a few seconds. If Ashe has fully stacked her Focus, she also fires out a fast salvo of arrows with every basic attack for the ability’s duration.

W: Volley

Ashe nocks several arrows on her bow before firing them simultaneously in a large cone before her. Each arrow deals damage and slows its victim.

[NEW] Ashe fires more arrows than before. Targets are more likely to be hit by multiple arrows, but they'll only take damage from one.

E: Hawkshot

Ashe commands her hawk to scout out an area. The hawk travels slowly, revealing areas it passes as it heads towards the target direction. Once the hawk reaches its destination, it hovers for a few seconds, revealing all non-stealthed units, even in brush.

[NEW] Hawkshot now has a global range. Ashe can store up to 2 Hawkshots for quick use, too.

R: Enchanted Crystal Arrow

Ashe fires a huge ice missile in a target direction, damaging and stunning the first enemy champion it hits, with the stun duration dependant on the distance the missile travels. Enchanted Crystal Arrow also damages and slows all neutral and enemy targets surrounding its victim.

Check out the abilities above and you’ll see that most of our changes focus on taking out the less exciting aspects of her kit. Frost Shot, for instance, was a pretty dull ability: you either had the ability on and slowed your targets while slowly losing mana, or you didn’t. At the same time, we really liked the idea of Ashe as a kind of utility marksman, someone who brings unrivalled crowd control and vision to games compared to other champs in her class. So we moved Frost Shot to her passive, simultaneously kicking her old toggle to the side while opening up her Q for something new. Ranger’s Focus fills the gap, providing Ashe with incentives for staying in combat (versus her old passive, which literally rewarded you for not attacking), and giving her a decent spike in damage when she handles her Focus stacks effectively.

As for the other part of her passive, removing crit strikes from a marksman might feel unintuitive - they’re pretty central to a bunch of basic attack damage dealers - but Frost Shot still rewards Ashe for building crit. Thing is, instead of hoping to get the occasional nuke, Ashe players will consistently deal extra damage as they build crit, and even more damage when they build that old staple of hers: Infinity Edge.

The changes to Ashe’s passive and Q enhances her basic attack-focused gameplay during all stages of a game. She shoots things, builds up Focus, then uses Ranger’s Focus to deal extra damage alongside her basic attacks. That left Volley too strong, so we tweaked it. We gave Ashe more rounds in her Volley, so if she’s able to cast it from distance, she can theoretically hit more targets and instantly fully stack her Focus. However, to compensate, we retooled the ability so that enemies and neutral targets are now much more likely to absorb multiple arrows. Old Ashe could fairly reliably hit enemy targets through their minion wave, something that’ll be much harder to pull off with the updated ability. This means enemy frontliners can get up in Ashe’s face now and reliably tank every Volley round for their backline squishies. These changes should emphasize Volley as a tool for Focus development and crowd control rather than raw power and poke, and although it’ll be less of a threat during laning, the ability will have a bigger presence in teamfights, particularly when Ashe positions herself correctly.

Finally, we took out the old Hawkshot passive because it basically gave Ashe a bunch of invisible power. Instead, we gave her tangible power by significantly improving her E active! Turning Hawkshot into a global ability - and allowing her to store multiple charges - gives Ashe and her team an immediate and immense vision bump, particularly when the enemy team’s effectively killing your network of wards. By firing out multiple Hawkshots, Ashe can use their vision to scout out Baron and the surrounding brush for signs of impending Fnatic-style brush baits. You now have no excuse for facechecking!

Ashe heads out onto PBE today. Take her for a spin and let us know your thoughts on the Frost Archer’s new kit! For more champion update team news, head over to the gameplay and balance subcommunity!"

This update is head to the PBE soon! For more info, check out Riot Repertoir'sfeedback thread!

Find your IRL friends in League

Here's Riot MattEnth with details on a new optional way to find friends on League of Legends that will be going out with 5.8 and slowly enabled on each server over the coming weeks:

"In 5.8, we’re rolling out the in-client option to discover which of your Facebook friends play League too. We’re launching in Turkey first, and expect to roll it out globally in the coming weeks. Read on for how it works!

If you opt-in to the feature, you’ll start seeing friend suggestions near the bottom of your League friends list. From there, you can add your friend on League or just dismiss the notification. That’s literally the only thing this feature does. Here’s what needs to happen for you to see a friend recommendation:

Both you and the suggested friend have activated and approved this Facebook feature

You are already friends on Facebook

You aren’t yet friends on League

Neither you nor the suggested friend have previously dismissed the recommendation

When you open a recommendation, you’ll first see your friend by their Facebook icon, full name, and summoner name. If you and your Facebook friend both agree to be LoL friends, you’ll start to be identified by your summoner name and summoner icon (though we’ll pre-populate friends notes with your real name so you can remember who’s who). If you dismiss the recommendation, you won’t appear as a suggested friend for that player.

We’re not being obnoxious with this feature:

This feature will never post to your (or anyone else’s) Facebook Timeline

People who aren’t your Facebook friends will never see your name, profile picture or profile

Not a single byte of your Facebook data will be shared with strangers or other companies

This feature is, and always will be entirely optional

After approving the feature, you can turn it off at any time

If you’d like to know more, check out our FAQ page, or just ask your questions here!"

MattEnth also popped on to reddit and the boards to answer some follow up questions on the new feature:

When asked about very clear message about the feature not intended to be obnoxious, he noted:

"<.< is it really that obvious that we were expecting players to be pretty negative? We did a lot of research on this one, some of which even leaked to reddit. We know some players are seriously salty about Facebook use in the gaming sphere.

At the end of the day, we don't blame players for being skeptical. There are a lot of gaming companies who really screwed up in the space of social media integration in the interest of a quick buck. Or worse, companies using YOUR Facebook account for "free" marketing by posting to your timeline in order to to market their product. Seems ridiculous now, I hope? But it wasn't that long ago...

We want to make sure we're clear: this is an optional feature is solely meant to help people find friends. Nothing more."

He continued, explaining what happens to FB friends you have declined:

"They'll show up in the "dismissed" bucket, so if you change your mind, you'll be able to re-add them. They won't appear as a recommendation."

As for if they will ever add a similar feature for Twitter or Google+, MattEnth noted:

"It's unlikely we will ever add Twitter (or Google+) to this feature. In our research, most of the people who use Twitter/Google+ also use Facebook, and so we get most of the value just by integrating with Facebook.

Twitter and Google+ also have what we call the "bidirectionality problem." On Facebook, both parties must explicitly consent to being friends, and that's a key part of the overall Facebook experience. On Twitter and Google+, you can follow or add whoever you want with basically no restrictions, which creates a different experience. How would we know on Twitter if person A and person B are actually friends?"

"It's complicated, but it depends on your region. It's unlikely we will ever add Twitter (or Google+) to this feature. In our research, most of the people who use Twitter/Google+ also use Facebook, and so we get most of the value just by integrating with Facebook.

Twitter and Google+ also have what we call the "bidirectionality problem." On Facebook, both parties must explicitly consent to being friends, and that's a key part of the overall Facebook experience. On Twitter and Google+, you can follow or add whoever you want with basically no restrictions, which creates a different experience. How would we know on Twitter if person A and person B are actually friends?

There are regions, however, that simply don't have high Facebook penetration (most notably China). We're looking at what social networks make sense for those regions and potentially integrating with those, but we're still in early stages of discussions there and still evaluating the larger social network ecosystem."

When asked if it was possible to increase or remove the max friend limit of 300, MattEnth commented:

"We can't remove the maximum. The cap actually has two distinct purposes, one is a boring technical reason. The other reason, however, is that we don't think having hundreds of friends is a really great experience. You end up with a bunch of people you don't really know or can't really play with.

Having that said... we are raising the cap from 300 to 325 shortly after the 5.8 patch goes live. We also have a lot better notifications and messaging involving people who are at the cap."

"We are raising the limit from 300-->325 shortly after the patch, in addition to several new alerts and messages for players who are near the cap.

The increase is independent of this feature - so even if you don't authorize the Facebook app, you'll still have 25 new spots on your friends list."

Champion Update: Ryze update live!

With 5.8 on the way, the Ryze champion update will also be hitting live! Here's the official announcement plus information on a limited time flex bundle for Ryze and six of his skins!

"We’ve just wrapped up Ryze’s stint on PBE, meaning he’s now ready to wade onto live with his tweaked kit and new effects! Check out his PBE article for the full story, or scroll down for the some in-game shots of the man with the runic tattoos.

Blast your enemies away with Ryze’s Rogue Bundle! This flexible cost bundle clocks in at 3899 RP (25% off), lasts until 23:59 PDT on May 4, and includes the following:

Ryze

Tribal Ryze (Legacy)

Uncle Ryze

Professor Ryze (Legacy)

Zombie Ryze (Legacy)

Dark Crystal Ryze

Pirate Ryze (Legacy)

That’s all from us for now! We’ll be back with more update news soon - in the meantime, leave us your thoughts and feedback in the comments below."

Up to date video previews for Ryze and the bundle skins can be found here:

Dark Horses: Support Nautilus

"Previously on Dark Horses, we covered a drunkard stumbling through the jungle and a prince doing his own dirty work. This time, we'll get you hooked on Support Nautilus.

From the bottom of the sea to bot lane

He’s big, he’s bad, and he can take a hit -- all reasons he’ll make you fear for your life in bot lane. Nautilus is a tanky champ, which makes it easy to go all-in, anchor himself to the enemy, and hold him in place while your friendly neighborhood marksman riddles the bad guy with bullets (or arrows, or axes, or rockets…).

Life as a Support

Nautilus can take a beating (many beatings, even). In laning phase, he can soak up damage using the shield from Titan’s Wrath (W). Remember: his shield scales with his maximum health, so items like Sight Stone and Relic Shield are a must.

Diving the enemy marksman

While his shield helps shrug off enemy damage, Nautilus’ Dredge Line (Q) can help his teammates deal some damage of their own. When Nautilus lands a hook on an enemy, he’ll drag himself and the target together, dealing magic damage and stunning them briefly. Keep in mind the hook can also be used on terrain, making it possible to be used defensively to get away as well as offensively to pin down the enemy.

Tools for teamfights

Nautilus brings lots of utility to a teamfight, thanks to his stun, root, movespeed reduction, knockup, and general tankiness. This means he can either hang by his carries and use his CC to peel for them, or engage at the frontline and use his hook to start a fight.
Once the fight starts, Nautilus can whip out his shield to absorb damage, then use his Staggering Blow passive to pin his foe into a position that can decide team fights. If an enemy manages to survive the encounter, they can’t run very far -- Riptide (E) has a low cooldown and applies an area-of-effect slow. Last, but not least, his ult -- Depth Charge -- fires a shockwave that chases an enemy champion and knocks them into the air.

The tide isn't always going your way

It’s hard to move under the sea

Nautilus’ mobility is low (that armor is heavy!) so he may fall behind when getting ganked or have a hard time following up ganks if he’s not yet level 6 or if he misses his hooks.

So many skills, so little mana

Recent changes to Riptide reduced its cooldown which helps harass enemies, start fights, or help allies run back to safety -- but that comes with a cost… a mana cost. You don't want to overuse E and find that you don't have enough mana to use the rest of your skills!

Also, mind your timing -- using your shield or your anchor prematurely gives your opponents an opportunity to pick a fight knowing that one or more of your skills is still on cooldown. You don’t want to leave yourself unprotected or out of position.

You can add Nautilus to your champion pool for 682 RP (30% off) and his AstroNautilus skin for 945 RP (30% off) from April 28 until 23:59 PDT May 1."

As mentioned at the tail end there, Nautilus and Astronautilus are on sale for 30% off through May 1st!